Competing Theories of the Policy Process

• A theory is a set of logically related set of statements, including some law like generalizations, that are empirically testable.

How do we know if a theory or model is useful or helpful?

• Order and simplify reality

• Models help identify what is significant.

• Models should be congruent with reality.

• Models should provide meaningful communication.

• Models should suggest explanations.

• Models should direct inquiry and research.

Where should we look when studying policy? Theories help us answer this question

Day to day decisionmaking

Statutory language

Policy outcomes/effects

Individuals

Institutions

Groups

Elite

Different Theories

(neo)Institutional

Rationalism

Incrementalism

Punctuated Equilibrium

Group/Pluralism

Elite

Rational Choice/Public Choice

Game theory

Systems theory

Stages Approach

Stages of the Policy Process

The policy formulation process:

The leadership selection process:

The Interest Group Process:

Opinion Making process:

Policy Legitimation process:

Policy Implementation:

Policy Evaluation Process:

Policy Formulation

• Who are the major actors?

• Who are generating the policy ideas?

• Players– Foundations

• Ford Foundation, Rockefeller Foundation

– Think Tanks• Brookings Institute; American Enterprise Institute• Council on Foreign Relations; Trilateral Commission• Council on Economic Development; Business Roundtable

How do these organizations influence the policy process?

• By defining social problems

• Defining the set of possible solutions

• In other words, setting the policy agenda

Sabatier

• Point of his article?

• Inadequacy of the Stages Approach

• Policy scholars have uncovered some things that political scientists tend to neglect

• Discusses 4 useful theories

a) The importance of policy subsystems involving actors from numerous public and private institutions and from multiple levels of government.

b) The importance of substantive policy information:

c) The critical role of policy elites vis-a-vis the general public.

d) The desirability of longitudinal studies of a decade or more

e) Differences in political behavior across policy types

Useful Theories

1. The open-systems framework of Richard Hofferbert.

2. An approach involving rational actors within institutions developed by Elinor Ostrom and her colleagues.

3. John Kingdon's "policy streams" framework

4. The "advocacy coalition" frame- work recently developed by Sabatier.

Institutional Analysis

• Developed by Elinor Ostrom and her colleagues at Indiana University

• An elaboration of rational choice/public choice theory

• How individual attributes and institutional rules and socioeconomic setting can affect behavior

• Several levels of institutional analysis

Policy Streams

• Problems Stream: events, information, etc.

• Policy Stream: researchers, policy entrepreneurs; policy options/alternatives

• Politics Stream: elections, leadership

• Window of opportunities when these three streams meet

Advocacy Coalition Approach

• focuses on the interaction of advocacy coalitions (each consisting of actors from a variety of institutions who share a set of policy beliefs). Policy change is a product of the competition and interaction between these coalitions.

• address the role played by technical information (the role of the media, think tanks, etc.)

• the most useful unit of analysis is the policy subsystem rather than any particular political institution or organization.

• conception of coalitions needs to break the traditional ideas of iron triangles and include 1) journalists, researchers and policy analysts and 2) actors at all levels of government (local, state, international).

OUTSIDE THE POLICY SUBSYSTEM 

• 1. Relative Stable Parameters – constitution, sociocultural values, natural resources

• 2. External (system) Events – socioeconomic changes, realigning elections, policy decisions from other subsystems.

These influence the constraints and resources of subsystem actors

INSIDE THE POLICY SUBSYSTEM

The belief system made up of three components:• 1. deep core – basic normative beliefs such as the

relative valuation of individual freedom versus social equality.

• 2. policy core – basic normative commitments and causal perception across an entire domain or subsystem (e.g., relative importance of economic development versus environmental protection).

• 3. secondary aspects – a set of narrower beliefs regarding specific attributes of a policy

Hypotheses:• lineup of allies and opponents tends to be stable• actors within a coalition will have substantial consensus

on issue pertaining to the policy core• Policy remains stable as long as the coalition structure

remains the same• Policy core attributes of a governmental program are

unlikely to change in the absence of significant external changes.

• Policy learning across coalitions will more likely occur if the coalition has the technical resources to engage in an informed debate and if the debate is not simply about deep core beliefs

• Learning is more likely if there is a professional forum with both sides participating